10 Ways to Maximize (and Modernize) Your Talent Acquisition Efforts

By M. Tamra Chandler | July 5, 2016

Overwhelmed with options for improving recruitment and hiring in your organization? Competition for top talent is as fierce as ever.

Although there is no shortage of underqualified applicants, the demand for well-qualified candidates continues to exceed supply. The best way to attract top talent is by providing an exceptional employee experience.

But in today’s environment, your recruiting function needs to be as sophisticated in connecting that experience to target employees as your marketing function is in attracting customers to your product.

Successful businesses make strategic talent acquisition a cornerstone of their business model. If you haven’t upped your recruiting game lately, here are 10 techniques to consider

1. Segmented Employer Branding

Customized branding can be simple as focusing on and promoting what you can provide that others can’t to that perfect candidate. Consider developing personas for segments you particularly want to attract and speaking directly to them.

For example, if your company is struggling to attract people with a certain skill set, create marketing content that highlights people with that skill set within your company and features them speaking to their peers about what they love about working for your company.

2. Social Media Presence

When to take an active role: When your online reputation matters to the people that you want to apply.

Before you shrug this off, remember that online reputation isn’t just for high-tech anymore; all organizations need to pay attention to social media strategy. This is especially true for any roles you’re filling that have highly transferable skills or that rely on recent graduates to fill the positions.

But don’t limit yourself to LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. Make sure that you’re actively managing sites that prospective candidates use to research prospective employers like Glassdoor and Vault.

3. Mobile Access

When to launch the tools: if your organization relies on the tech-savviness of its employees and you want to match the internal with the external.

Do you use a lot of mobile technology within your organization for employees to do their jobs and for managers to drive results? Get mobile-enabled in recruitment. Mobile technology can make it easy for relatively passive candidates to apply, and you can even pre-qualify candidates though your app.

4. Video

When to turn on the camera: You have budget limitations and are looking at candidate pools beyond your local geography.

Video can help in one of two ways:

First, it helps you save money on travel through video interviews of remote candidates (either live or recorded).

Second, even for local candidates, videos of job previews and current employees can build awareness of what it’s like within your organization without bringing every candidate on site (remember your employer brand?).

5. Networks

When to leverage your extended reach: Always -- and as much as possible.

Your employees belong to affiliations and groups; these groups naturally give them the tools to act as “recruiters.” Also think about where your brand is already showing up and turn it into a source of applicants, whether it’s conferences, publications, online marketplaces, or event sponsorships, etc.

6. Alumni

When to encourage those who left: If you can, tell a great story with those who have left your employ.

Often people who have left your organization did so on a good note. These happy alums can continue to be great advocates for you, and likely have great networks to mine.

Who knows? -- by engaging with them they may even come back! If you have a referral bonus program, consider expending it to former employees as well.

7. SEO/SEM (Search Engine Optimization/Search Engine Marketing)

When to put a little extra into your postings: When you need to stand out in the crowd.

Search engine tools can help drive applicants to your postings (especially helpful if you don’t have the dollars for sourcing) and set you apart in high-volume hiring. This can be particularly useful for roles where there are a lot of similar opportunities out there.

8. Proactive Sourcing

When to invest: You have an immediate need for critical skills, specific experience, or highly technical skills, and your reactive recruiting efforts aren’t filling your requisitions with enough qualified talent.

While it’s tempting to rely on a third party provider to help you source for key positions, finding the right talent for your unique needs will be an ongoing challenge. It’s best to build this capability internally – and not just in your recruiters.

Your recruiters and hiring managers should collaborate on sourcing plans and should share accountability for implementing those plans. But do bring in a search firm to help with extremely difficult to fill positions and executive searches.

9. Gamification

When to make applying a game: When it’s brand or role-relevant.

If you need to engage potential applicants that expect more than filling out a candidate profile, and/or you want to learn a little about how they may fit your role, using gamification can be a light, easy assessment method. This is especially useful if you’re using a mobile app already anyway.

10. Referrals

When to encourage: Every time, but with different tactics.

Your current employees are always your best source of new candidates. To make your referral approach work best, think through three elements.

First, set expectations with employees about what you’re looking for. Be specific; you’re going for quality, not quantity.

Finally, get real on rewards and what its “worth” to you. If you decide to offer referral bonuses, they don’t need to be one size fits all. Consider offering larger referral bonuses for particularly hard-to-fill positions.

Whether you’re already a recruiting rock-star or still learning all you can, I hope this spurs you to think or re-think about some of the many interesting and effective options out there.

Driving effective talent acquisition is both an art and a science, particularly in today’s technology-driven and fast-changing world. But the good news is that all the options allow you to build a portfolio of creative and effective tools to bring qualified and excited candidates to your doors.

About The Author

M. Tamra Chandler is a bona fide people maven. She’s spent the majority of her career thinking about people, researching how they’re motivated, and developing new and effective ways for organizations to achieve the ultimate win-win: inspired people driving inspiring performance. She’s also the CEO and co-founder of PeopleFirm, one of Washington State’s fastest-growing businesses and most successful women-owned firms. An award-winning leader in her field (she’s been recognized by Consulting Magazine twice as one of the top consultants in the U.S.), she is the author of How Performance Management is Killing Performance — and What to Do About It.

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